


On Our Way (Again)

by holysmotez



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997), Final Fantasy VII Remake (Video Game 2020), Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Marriage Proposal, Post-AC, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25885510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/holysmotez/pseuds/holysmotez
Summary: Sometimes, he had to reach out.  And sometimes, it was the little things that said everything.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Cloud Strife
Comments: 25
Kudos: 136





	On Our Way (Again)

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write up a post-AC fic for a while since I rewatched it some weeks ago. Honestly, I don't remember when I wrote most of this but suddenly I now have almost 4k words? LOL. No real point either except to be something fluffy and pleasant for my fellow shippers. Enjoy.

With a hand out, Barret hauled Cloud out of the pool and thumped him on the back, boisterous about him having _more lives than a damn kitty cat._

Cloud smiled. He kept smiling, and couldn’t stop if he tried, even if he did have to suffer through some good-natured needling about how he _better start calling more_ , especially now that even Vincent had a phone. Cloud knew he deserved his share of teasing, and used to think of it as the price of admission. It still was to some degree, but with him and his family cleansed of Geostigma, spared once more from annihilation, he welcomed it. He cherished it all, including everything about this loud, strange, extended family he had found on his way towards healing, and he wouldn’t allow any memory to taint that for him again.

As Barret and the others soared away in the Highwind, off to return his extended family to their rightful places in the world, Fenrir sputtered and knocked about like a spent mule pushed too hard, but he took it easy with her as they returned to Edge’s streets. He hoped the poor girl could make it the whole way.

However, it wasn’t just for the sake of Fenrir’s engine that he directed the bike in little more than a gentle roll through town. His immediate family rode with him, with Tifa balancing on the rear and securing Denzel, while Marlene sandwiched herself between her brother and Cloud’s back. Even at this easy pace, every bump in the road had Marlene squeezing her small arms like a vice around his waist, her face buried into his back. 

It never crossed his mind until now, but he thought about having a talk with Tifa about maybe saving up for a truck. He blinked at the idea, feeling ridiculous by reflex at how the mundane thought warmed him, but he’s learning to embrace that feeling with less scrutiny now.

“Marlene,” Tifa said gently when Seventh Heaven’s street sign came into view, and he rolled them to a stop. “We’re home!” 

Marlene peeled herself off of him and Fenrir before he had even cut the engine, breaking into a sprint, laughter bubbling out of her.

“Careful!” Tifa said, half-hearted, knowing her urge of caution to be in vain when Denzel chased after her a second later.

“Hey, wait up!” the boy said, his giggles following in the wake of Marlene’s, and both joining into a chorus of laughter. 

The sound took Cloud’s breath away. 

He hadn’t heard the two of them laugh like that in a long time. 

Or ever, maybe. When he shared a look with Tifa, her brow raised high as she dismounted from her seat, and he knew he wasn’t the only one to have that thought. 

The children’s laughter seemed to carry up into the sky, while the gentle, healing rain continued to fall. The last light of dusk glimmered off the crystalline droplets that gathered and fell from the corners of rooftops, and from the puddles rippling all along Edge’s streets. The sounds, the motion, the sparkling light was all so _lush_ that it felt like a lucid dream, and he didn’t think to stop at Seventh Heaven’s door until he heard the jingle of keys from Tifa’s pocket. 

Tifa had since turned her attention back to the rambunctious kids, the latter fidgeting impatiently at the doorway to their home. _Tifa’s and the kids’ home_ , he thinks, his chest aching. Even though much of his wounds had been healed at the church, there was still the wound he had inflicted here. The part of him who still felt like a stray being taken in out of sympathy.

The lock clicked and the kids flew inside, almost forgetting to toe their shoes off. Tifa said, “So, who’s hungry?”

“Me!” Marlene yelled, drawing out the word.

“I’m starving!” Denzel said. He gasped. “Tifa, can we have curry? Please?”

“Curry, huh? Hmm, well...” Tifa started, finger to her chin, smiling as she pretended to think about it. Cloud knew she loved making it just as much as she loved eating it, and he always made it a point to source some from New Mideel whenever his routes made it feasible. Nonetheless, she says, “You know those ingredients come from a long way away, and it might be awhile before Cloud can pick some up for us again. Maybe you should ask him if it’s alright?”

Denzel, who had started to shiver in his wet clothes, nonetheless whipped about just inside the doorway with his eyes wide and expectant. “Can we? Please?”

“Hmm,” Cloud pretended to think, too, even though he really didn’t understand why Tifa felt the need to put the decision on him. He took one last glance skyward, where the pink clouds were turning purple with dusk. “I think the occasion is special enough.”

“Yes!” Denzel said, pumping his fist.

But as he, Marlene, and Tifa headed further inside, Cloud hesitated to follow. 

Without missing a beat, Tifa turned back to him and said, “Aren’t you coming in?” 

He heard the distress in her question, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to say _yes_. Not yet. He didn’t know how to explain to her what he was feeling, now that he was faced with the open door. A door he thought he would never pass through again. He wanted to savor it a little longer.

Just a little longer.

“Yeah! Come on, Cloud! You and Denzel aren’t sick anymore, so we’re going to be a family again!” Marlene shouted out into the street, rainwater dripping from her bangs.

Tifa stayed silent as her gaze dropped, and she began tugging off her boots.

“Aren’t we?” Marlene tried, childish enthusiasm draining from her.

A sharp ache tore at his heart at the sight of her tortured expression, a pain not much better than Yazoo’s bullet. It was an expression he was so tired of seeing on his family’s faces, and after all he had been through, he felt foolish. Utterly foolish, standing out in the middle of the street with Marlene begging at him to come in. He had destroyed Sephiroth, twice over now. Was it really so hard to take these last few steps?

So Cloud spoke, firmly: “That’s right. We are.”

Saying that had seemed so hard, yet it had also been that simple. The tortured expression vanished like the healing rain on his skin, Marlene’s eyes instantly transformed by radiant glee. And like a scouring sun after a rain, it also took with it the ache in his heart, and the heavy thoughts that had paralyzed him. 

Tifa didn’t look at him, but a soft smile crept across her lip when finally he stepped over the threshold and shut the door behind him. She turned to the kids and said, “Speaking of not being sick, why don’t you two run upstairs and get some dry clothes on before you catch a chill?” 

With an added reminder to place their wet clothes in the bath for now, the kids raced upstairs, still terribly keyed up from the day's events. 

To be honest, he was too. There was another revelation bubbling in his chest as he stripped off his wet gloves and boots. He was cured. His days ahead weren’t counting down, but countless. 

While he wouldn’t go as far as to say he was _healthy_ , he still had the rest of his life to mend. The immensity of the idea still staggered him, his heart racing at being back under this roof, no longer from fear anymore, but exhilaration.

He closed his eyes, still able to hear the rain patter down outside the door. 

_Thank you._

“Cloud?” In front of him, Tifa had approached, a worried bent to her brow. “Did you hear me? I said I’m going to start the rice. Why don’t you go upstairs and dry off, too?”

Water still clung to her chin and glistened off her shoulders. “What about you?” he said.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be up in a minute.”

A shiver belied statement even before she finished her sentence. He hesitated. He had found it more and more difficult to take his eyes off of her ever since they left the church, another long-familiar ache blooming back to life. _Don’t worry_ , she told him, but how often has she had to say that? To manage her expectations?

It was time he implemented his own cure for that, too.

“I’ll start the rice,” he said. “You go warm up first.”

“But-”

“I insist.”

His firmness coaxed out a smile from her. He could immediately sense her fatigue in how she gave no further effort to argue. 

He watched her retreat until she disappeared upstairs. Only then did he move to place his rain-slicked sword aside to dry off by the door, along his armor. It took him another moment for him to tear his eyes away from the line of shoes— his boots, her boots, and the kids’ - before he headed for the kitchen behind the bar.

After having washed and put the rice on boil on the stove, Tifa reappeared in the wake of a stampede, following behind Marlene and Denzel. Their feet thundered down the steps and swung into the living area, and recalling Tifa’s fatigue, the chaotic noise made him bristle a bit.

“Stop running,” Cloud said, voice level and firm, but with no mistake as to the warning in his tone.

The two kids screeched to a halt and mumbled out their sorries. They proceeded to occupy themselves on their own with one of the few board games Tifa kept on hand for both them and their customers. Maybe the kids were especially agreeable today in light of the day's events, but it nonetheless remained a long-standing mystery to him as to why the effect of his voice had always been so immediate on them. It was a weird power to have. Whatever the reason, he stopped thinking about it when Tifa’s gentle hand touched his shoulder.

“I’ve got this,” she said. “Curry still okay for tonight?” 

With the aroma of fresh rice wafting from the pot, he was suddenly, keenly aware of his own ravenous hunger gnawing in his gut. It drew to mind some unpleasant memories of making do with whatever scavenged rations he could find on derelict Shinra trucks and storehouses scattered across Midgar. He spent many long nights alone, chasing freeze-dried protein down with mouthfuls of whiskey, surrounded by the cold stone of the church, and with his arm burning in pain. Now, stone cold sober and with every last fiber of him screaming with joy at the prospect of a home-cooked meal from Tifa, with her and the kids in the warmth of their home, it truly sunk in that he had been a fool. 

After Meteorfall, he had told Tifa his new start would be different. Different, because he would have her this time. And for a time, it had been. Or at least it felt that way, every single day that he could wake up to the sight of her face. Right up until the first portentous stains of Geostigma had manifested on his arm, and made him choke on his own words. 

He thought he had been wrong yet again, and that no matter how much confidence and hope he started with, only failure and misery awaited him in the end. The cycle remained unbroken, and that this time, there was nothing Tifa could do but sit by his side and watch as his mind and body rotted away. 

He couldn’t bear doing that to her again. 

But then it _had_ been different, but also more of the same all at once. The night wasn’t long ago when, much like her fists, Tifa knew how to place her words until only the unassailable truth remained standing. With all the marks of their time together in the Lifestream, she drove at the deepest parts of him, dragging his burdens and mistakes out into the inescapable open. But along with them, the strength and resolve to face the worst of his demons-- because she had believed in him better than he did himself. 

He was a fool to have thought his new start would be different at all without making an effort to do some of the believing for himself for a change. Because the real truth was that nothing would ever change if his perspective didn’t either, and the latter was what made all the difference to his family. They all expected better than for him to keep thinking he had to drag the weight of his sins around all on his own. 

The revelation was as miraculous as the healing rain.

So, that’s what he’ll strive to do. To work on sharing his burdens. Certainly won’t be perfect, and maybe not always good, but better, more days than not. 

And trust that if he couldn’t manage with his strength alone, then all he had to do was reach out. Open his door.

His eyes slipped shut. _You knew that, too, didn’t you?_

“Cloud? If you’re too exhausted, then I can make something for you later,” Tifa said, her voice coaxing his presence back into the kitchen. She had changed into a loose white tee and a pair of charcoal-black exercise shorts, and there was simply no way he was missing his very first meal with her after coming back from the dead.

He said, “No. I want to eat with you all.”

“Alright then. I found you a fresh towel, too. I left it on the bed.”

Her fingers trailed down his back, and his affection for her arced through him. She hovered so close and he wanted to kiss her. His heart thudded, but Marlene’s question earlier still knocked about inside his skull. Were _they going to be a family again?_

He also felt like he would lose his mind if he didn’t kiss her. 

So he gave in with just a lingering press of his lips to her temple, enough to quell the pleasant ache in him. She smelled so sweet, and even more enchanting with the musty rain still soaking through her hair.

Tragically, his fleeting bliss melted away when Tifa ducked her head. But the breathless way she said _Cloud_ had him gripping the edge of the stove to keep himself from doing something far less chaste in front of the kids. 

Despite his considerable restraint, somewhere behind them, Marlene gasped. 

“I saw that!” she accused.

“Saw what?” Cloud called back over his shoulder, if only to distract himself from the utterly captivating, embarrassed smile Tifa tried to hide in his shoulder. 

“Denzel! Cloud kissed Tifa!” Marlene shouted.

“Ew,” Denzel muttered.

“What do you mean _ew?_ ” Marlene demanded, as if she had pulled the question verbatim out of Cloud’s own mind. He fought down a chuckle, but Tifa was less reserved, her faint giggle caressing his ear. And although intensely curious to hear Denzel’s reply, Cloud found himself in the midst of being pushed out of the kitchen. 

“I think it’s time I broke this up,” she said. Playful as they were, Cloud knew Tifa’s pushes at his back also meant business. With her smile reassuring him over him causing the minor scandal in the dining room, and thus banished from the kitchen, he headed upstairs.

To think, he would have evenings like these for a lifetime, and never get sick of them.

As light as his thoughts were that carried him upstairs, and even as resilient as his lab-engineered body was, the receding touch of death had left behind a bone-deep weariness in him that caught up to him like a freight train. He lumbered to the top step, then shuffled over to his office door, but paused when his tired eyes fell to his lonely cot. 

He frowned. He could have sworn Tifa said she put a towel out for him. Looking about, he saw nothing of the sort. 

He was about to call downstairs when another possibility leaped to mind. A pleasant ache returned to his chest as he crossed the hall to Tifa’s bedroom. Their bedroom, before his illness and guilt pushed him down the hall. 

Sure enough, when he rounded the jamb and peered inside, there he spotted the object in question White with black stripes, fluffy and folded neatly on the corner of the bed.

 _Their_ bed.

For much of his life, he thought it was all about the big, grand gestures. Back when he was a boy, who would have laughed at the idea of something as banal as a towel left on a bed being as potent as any gushing love letter. He met his match in Tifa, the both of them choosing actions when they couldn’t find words, but in that moment, he wondered if they were on their way to growing beyond them. With just a simple act, Tifa spoke her own answer to Marlene’s question.

_Were they going to be a family again?_

With that towel on the bed, she told him they never stopped.

Eventually, he tore himself from staring at the towel, picking it up as he headed for the shower. Maybe part of growing up was in learning that it’s the small, everyday gestures that say everything. 

Dirt and grime sloughed off his skin and from his hair in thick bands. He hadn’t realized just how much he had caked on him until he saw so much gray and black swirl down the drain. The strangeness of having a moment’s peace never quite washed away, but his sore muscles better once he shut the water off. As he changed out into dry, ash-colored sweats and a loose white tee, the warm, comforting aroma of toasted spices began to waft upstairs. 

The pleasant smell reminded him of when he had picked them up the first time on a delivery to New Mideel, after he had asked the client offhandedly what was making her home smell so wonderful. The older woman was so flattered and over the moon that she gifted him a jar with a mixture of leaves and seeds he had never seen before. 

_Does your wife cook?_ she had asked him, conversationally.

 _She’s...yeah. She does_ , he had answered. Conversationally. _But I don’t think she’s worked with ingredients like these before._

Oh! In that case, I’ll give you a few of my recipes, too!

_That’s very kind of you._

_It’s my pleasure. I’m always happy to share, especially after all that’s happened to the world. I hope you and your family will enjoy it in good health!_

He didn’t think much of it then. He and Tifa never really talked about labels as they seemed highly superfluous. Inadequate. Constricting, even.

Yet when he thought of it now, under the lens of his new perspective, it didn’t seem all that redundant anymore. In fact, he suddenly felt _urgent_ in a way he couldn’t explain. 

Urgent enough that it sent him flying down the stairs. He moved as if on fire with it, in as much of a stampede as the kids were earlier. His feet thud at the bottom, where he looks across the bar and locks eyes with hers.

“Cloud?” Tifa asks, cocking a brow at his hurried entrance. “I’ve got this, so you can relax. Denzel already put out the place settings.”

He launched toward her. He crossed over to the kitchen in swift strides, and her eyes grew wide, and even wider when he pulled her away from the stove, snaked his arms around her waist, and buried his face into her neck.

“Cloud?” she asked. 

Then, he dropped to his knee.

“Cloud,” Tifa said, breathless this time. 

The only other sounds to be heard was the curry as burbled on the stove, and the faint whisper of the rainfall outside. With her hand cradled in his, all the words he wanted to say backed up like a logjam in his throat as he gazed up at her, suddenly crushed by how desperately he loved her. Had loved her for as long as he could remember. But he was used to it, the weight of his love for her. He had been carrying it since he was a boy. 

Now, he was going to try to better share that burden.

It had been the urgency he felt upstairs, and it was time he had reached out. Properly.

“I’ve been so stupid, Tifa.” He winced at himself. Smooth as ever. Right in front of the kids, too, who had gone deathly silent.

“You haven’t, Cloud,” she said, because of course she did. 

He shook his head. If he could fight through anything, for everything, then he could fight for this, too. “No, it’s not. I had waited around to die, when all I want to do is _live_ , Tifa. Really live, as if I have both forever and only today,” he said. “But you were right, and I’m done carrying my weight all alone. Not just my past, but my present and future, too. I’ve wasted enough time, and I’m not about to do it again with the time she gave back to us.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to grovel,” she said with a tight laugh, stooping so that she’s crouching down with him. He wanted to laugh with her. That’s what she thought he was doing? _Of course she did, you idiot._

Her soft hand glided across his cheek, her fingers curling under his chin and lifting up his gaze. He hadn’t noticed he had drifted down and away. “What’s gotten into you?”

He rallied himself, saying, “The kids. Our family. Everything.” He pushed through, until he felt the gravity of it loosen its hold, like chains breaking one by one. “And you,” he said, his eyes burning. He lifted his hand and clutched hers at his cheek. “ _You_ have.”

“I’ve what?”

Her brow twisted, patient with him despite being baffled by his clumsy words. He wished there were another way, but for right now, words would just have to make do. 

He said, “Tifa, would you be my wife?”

He lets the question go free, releasing it like a caged bird. Both terrifying and exhilarating, he felt like he was _flying,_ just as he had done with the help of his family here in Edge. Tifa’s breath had caught in her throat as if she had flown with him, her hand trembling with her surprise. Her eyes took on a noticeable shimmer as they searched his.

“Holy shit,” Denzel says somewhere beside them, but Cloud couldn’t have cared less about scolding him for his language. Meteor could have been falling all over again, and it still wouldn't have torn his hopeful gaze away from Tifa. 

Not until Tifa said, with her voice shaky and raw: “ _Yes._ ”

Her reply called him back down to earth, and to her, where he kissed her. A firm press of his lips to hers, wanting to somehow convey all of his struggles, promises, love, and gratitude through the connection-- but now, even his own actions were starting to feel inadequate to the task. Hot tears wetted his cheeks, and he couldn’t be sure whether they were hers or his own.

Marlene’s shrill whoop of glee pierced the quiet. “Did you just get married?” she asked. “Denzel! We have to call Papa!”

“But what about dinner?” Denzel replied.

The forgotten curry, meanwhile, continued to simmer happily on the stove, while the rain outside whispered its tender song.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also trying to see if I can't be let out of horny jail for good behavior


End file.
